Throughout 2004 political life in Kyrgyzstan remained polarized between supporters and opponents of Pres. Askar Akayev. Pleas by Akayev to opposition forces not to begin parliamentary and presidential election campaigns prematurely (both elections were scheduled for 2005) were largely ignored. Akayev stated repeatedly in public that he would not seek another term in office, but pro-government politicians and parties urged him to reconsider. In January primitive listening devices were discovered in the offices of six opposition members of the parliament. Although national security chief Kalyk Imankulov denied that any government agency had been involved in the bugging, the opposition politicians called for the resignation of Imankulov and other security officials and laid ultimate blame for the affair on Akayev and his supporters. Relations between the government and opposition worsened after the decision by the Supreme Court in mid-April to acquit the officials who had been held responsible for the killings of demonstrators in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2002.

In April police broke up a rally of members of the prominent opposition Ar-Namys party in Bishkek. The party was seeking to draw attention to the continued imprisonment of its leader, former vice president Feliks Kulov, who was serving a jail term on charges of abuse of office that his supporters said were politically motivated. Ar-Namys activists became convinced that Kulov would be released, but only after parliamentary elections scheduled for February 2005. The party and independent journalists also accused the government of restricting freedom of the media by closing down the independent Pyramida TV and Osh TV stations; U.S. financier George Soros intervened personally with the Kyrgyz president, and Pyramida was back on the air by the end of April.

In early May Akayev called on the newly formed Consultative Council for Fair Management to make a genuine effort to fight the corruption that was widely acknowledged to be damaging the country’s economic development. A television report noted that 284 officials were facing charges of corruption and abuse of office. By mid-July the president was boasting to a conference attended by international donors that direct foreign investment in the first six months of 2004 had reached the high point achieved in 1996 and that foreign investors were shifting their interest from extractive industries to other sectors of the economy.

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